Lindy, pale but recovering, grabbed the mike. “It’s Dad?”

“He almost passed out on the boat before we got back to the Club. He’s at Stanford Hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong. Over.”

“Oh, Bobby, stop the over thing! Did he eat dinner?”

“What?” Bobby’s voice faded and came back. “Did he what?”

“Dinner, did he eat his dinner?”

“Yeah, such as it was. Why?”

“Tell him I love him. And write us what happens, to Nuku Hiva.”

Bobby’s voice rattled back half an octave higher. “Lindy! Did you hear what I told you?”

“Nuka Hiva, Bobby,” she said. “Over and out.”

She hung up the mike. Mitch protested and reached for it. She grabbed his wrist. “He’s my dad, it’s my decision.”

He didn’t want to return, he really didn’t, and he didn’t himself believe Shawn was sick. But he couldn’t take the responsibility. “You could be kicking your butt.” he warned her, “the rest of your life.”

“It’s my butt.”

Mitch tried all next day for more news, without success. But one hundred miles west of Catalina Island, two days later, he tried San Pedro Marine Operator and got through to Bobby, long distance.

Shawn had been discharged the next morning and was back at his Club. He was still planning on the Hawaiian Race.

He broke out two bottles of beer and went topside. Lindy, still seasick, sat huddled in the lee of the deckhouse. She shook her head greenly at the beer. He told her about her dad.

She did not seem surprised at all. “He was just trying to tell me something again. He’d rather try to die than try to learn the words.”

She seemed too sick to care. He was still nauseous himself, and too busy navigating and sailing the boat to do her work as well. They sailed on in a shambles of dirty dishes and strewn bedclothes for days.

Part II - Night

PART II

Night

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

She felt the drop in water temperature that dusk was bringing.

Her thirst remained.

She tried to fend off the night by keeping her face to the setting sun, attracted to dying light like a moth to a lantern.

Her cheeks were still feverish from the day’s heat and her lips were cracked and stinging, but her body was chilled. The floatable jacket continually slithered up her sides to chafe her armpits. It had to be tugged down to retain her heat and keep her upper body bearably warm. Her legs meanwhile grew colder. She was three people: one hot, one clammy, one freezing.